A pleasing variety of homes on Lakeview's Canal Boulevard

THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Lakeview, bounded roughly by Robert E. Lee Boulevard on the north, I-610 on the south, Orleans Avenue on the east and the 17th Street Canal on the west.

View full sizeR. Stephanie BrunoThe whole composition is rendered in brick painted a warm cream color, with rustic batten shutters over the windows.

The neighborhood's rebound since the catastrophic flooding after Hurricane Katrina has been nothing short of spectacular. The Harrison Avenue commercial corridor now offers a variety of amenities.

Many of Lakeview's original houses -- built between 1910 and World War II -- remain and have been renovated, but new homes have sprung up where others were lost. Vacant lots can be still be found, but they are fewer and farther between.

Complementing the residential and commercial rebuild are restored public green spaces, including Canal Boulevard's "Sunken Gardens."

THE BLOCK: The 5900 block of Canal Boulevard on the odd-numbered, or east, side of the street, between Polk Avenue on the north and Brooks Street on the south.

The block is just a few streets south of Harrison Avenue and faces one portion of the blocks-long Sunken Gardens.

Massive oaks -- unbowed by the storm's fury -- line the street.

THE HOUSES: Six houses, each very different from the other. Many are new.

There's a bungalow at the Polk end of the block and a ranch house at the Brooks end. In between are a quasi-Southern Colonial, a handsome painted brick house that evokes a French farmhouse, a Colonial Revival cottage and a sparkling two-story built in the Greek Revival style.

Though the mix of types and styles may sound too disparate to be appealing, the opposite is true: The wide lots give each house room to breathe, and the oaks tie everything together.

The Brother Martin Ladies of the Shield do something interesting when planning their annual Holiday Tour: Unlike many other groups, they choose a different neighborhood each year as the focus.

One year it was Lake Vista, last year it was Faubourg St. John, and this year it's in the resurgent Lakeview neighborhood.

Armed with a camera and a list of addresses of the five houses on tour, I set out to get a sidewalk preview and find a block that makes a great Street Walk. I find it in the 5900 block of Canal Boulevard.

Anatomy of the block

I begin at Polk and walk south toward Brooks. The first house is a stylish blue bungalow where workers are putting on the finishing touches. Seeing it, I think it could easily be a renovation in progress, but Google's Street View images of the block, taken in 2008, reveal it is a brand-new house. It has a hipped roof and a wing projecting forward on the left, creating a recessed porch. With its brick base and steps, all it needs now is landscaping.

The neighboring house is a two-story with a symmetrical façade and uber-tall columns. I have Southern Colonial on my mind, and it makes me want to add a porch under the gable-ended projection on both the first and second floors. A black-and-gold fleur-de-lis door decoration and Who Dat flag in the upstairs window signal the homeowner's allegiance.

A well-mown vacant lot (the only one on the block) separates the tall house from its French farmhouse neighbor. The farmhouse design is appealing -- gable-fronted projections at both ends of the house, the left one holding a large, arched-topped window, the other a recessed entry. The whole composition is rendered in brick painted a warm cream color, with rustic batten shutters over the windows. I can't say for sure, but -- based on the fact that I see a house with a similar footprint on Street View -- this may be a dramatic makeover of an older home.

I pass a bed of blooming butterfly ginger en route to the front of the Colonial Revival house next door and stop a second to appreciate the sweet and spicy fragrance.

The house is a blue cottage with wings on both sides and a screened-in porch on the left. Shaded by a giant oak and lushly landscaped, it has a cozy appeal, underscored by the Colonial Revival shutters with their cutouts in the top and louvers on the bottom. The oak branches are covered with small ferns, a soft look for such mighty arms.

View full sizeR. Stephanie BrunoPainted a gleaming white, it stands out in the shadow of yet another ancient oak tree.

At last I reach the grande dame of the block, the house that will be on the Brother Martin home tour.

It's a two-story built in the Greek Revival style, with a one-story wing extending out to the right. Beyond the wing, a wide green space is surrounded by a handsome iron fence, already wearing a holiday garland. There's no doubt that it was recently built -- it does not appear on Street View -- and it seems to have taken up several vacant lots.

Like a classic New Orleans double-gallery house, this one has three openings across the front on both the first and second floors, porches at both levels, and iron railings between the box columns. Louvered shutters flank the windows, and the designer has accentuated the height of the windows by adding a crown over each. Painted a gleaming white, it stands out in the shadow of yet another ancient oak tree.

Well-chosen and beautifully maintained landscaping complements the house, and the two together -- house and garden -- make a strong impression.

Though there is another house on the block -- a ranch -- I decide to spend the rest of my time in the Sunken Gardens of the neutral ground.

Life on the street

Not another soul is walking on the street at this particular moment, so I haven't anyone to corral into a conversation about the renaissance of the block or neighborhood.

But I am intrigued by the Sunken Gardens, so I go online and see what I can find.

In "New Orleans in the Thirties," Mary Lou Widmer writes that the site of the gardens was once an open drainage ditch.

"The drainage ditch in the middle of the neutral ground was not yet covered over, and there were no sunken gardens. That would come later, in 1937."

In her "The New Orleans Garden: Gardening in the Gulf South," Charlotte Seidenberg writes: "The Sunken Gardens on Canal Boulevard, a Works Progress Administration project in the 1930s abandoned in the '60s, was restored in the 1980s."

In 2007, thanks to a massive volunteer and fundraising effort by the Lakeview Civic Association, the gardens were restored again, according to a news article.

Al Petrie, chairman of the civic association's green space committee, tells me there's a marker that notes a landscaping project done in the '20s, before the WPA project transformed the neutral ground. Once the WPA effort was complete, the community used the gardens like a park, he says.

"There used to be benches in the gardens, and people would take their dogs and kids there and sit on the benches while they ran around," he says.

Petrie says inhospitable conditions make it tricky to maintain the gardens.

"The neutral ground is in full sun all the time so it stays hot and dry. But we've found plants that do very well there, like the Knock-Out roses and oleanders," he says. "We also plant Indian Hawthorne and African irises."

The city cuts the grass in the gardens but he and a host of volunteers maintain them. He says thousands have helped out since the 2007 restoration, many supplied by Beacon of Hope and St. Paul's Homecoming Center.

"During the growing season, we're out there all the time, weeding and pruning," he says. "We treat it like it's our own backyard."

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The Brother Martin Holiday Home Tour, Dec. 12, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., features five homes near Harrison Avenue, with a boutique at 6401 Gen. Haig Ave. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 day of. Purchase through the Brother Martin Alumni and Development Office, 504.284.6700.